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Green knew, though he hated to admit it, that he was a perfectionist.
His recent… mishaps, he could say, regarding that concert he’d had recently, and his increasing number of failed attempts trying to beat Alan in a fight for once in his life, and, well. His experience with social media had not gone particularly well on the ‘being normal about it’ front.
Still, he thought, listening to Purple, sparring with as much, or even more, vigour than they had hours ago, this is a bit much.
From where he stood, Green couldn’t tell exactly what his friend was up to. They had set up a training arena at the bottom of their tree, surrounded by a wall to keep out unwanted mobs. However, as he trudged closer, through the bushes coating the floor and past more jungle trees, he could hear the sharp clash of sword against sword increasing in volume, then, a little surprisingly, a fishing rod hooking into the wall and an impact. He strained his ears for the now-familiar whoosh of elytra, considering Purple favoured that method of movement over the rod, but there was nothing on that front.
Speaking of, he gave up on walking, instead pulling out his own fishing rod— enchanted with Mending and Unbreaking only, he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to give it the proper fishing-related enchants yet— and swung up into the canopy. He grinned as the wind rushed against his face.
He nearly smacked face-first into Purple’s treehouse. With a grunt, he shifted his rod over to one hand then slammed the other arm up in front of his face and hitting that into the window. Thankfully, neither the arm nor the window broke on impact.
Green shook out his now stinging arm as he lowered himself down, only pausing to unhook the rod and throw the barb into the bark of the tree so it wouldn’t break on him. Briefly, he took the opportunity to take a look at his surroundings. The sky was bright blue, like usual, though the sun was beginning to drop behind the mountains in the distance. Blocky white clouds were scattered not far above him. He could hear parrots chirping in the trees.
He was getting close to the ground now, so he gazed down at the training arena below him. It was pretty barebones; the ground, made of regular dirt and not coarse, was padded down so flat that it didn’t really matter either way, because there was no chance any grass was growing there. The walls were made of jungle fences, with logs lining the top, presumably so spiders didn’t climb the walls to get in— though, privately, Green thought of himself dropping in from above and figured an oversized arthropod could do the same.
Purple themself was fighting an armour stand construct. Curiously, their elytra, a near-permanent accessory nowadays, was hung up on the trunk of the tree near a ladder that likely led up to their house. They had a fishing rod out now, though, so they probably were just trying it out by itself.
“Hey, Purple!” Green yelled out, even though it was probably unnecessary considering his proximity to his friend. They didn’t respond, too focused on fighting—
Wait. What?
Green dropped down another twenty blocks, landing safely next to the trunk of the tree, away from where they were practising.
“Purple?” he tried again. Still no response.
His eyes narrowed. He crossed his arms, leaning against the trunk of the tree, tracking their movement.
They pulled out an axe, swinging it at the construct straight on. Green expected them to pull it back with the rod, or maybe use his sword to hit it a little quicker— the construct didn’t have a shield or anything— but they didn’t. Vaguely, he remembered them mentioning how quick attacks weren’t really their strong suit. Still, this was weirdly slow for even them.
Right as he thought that, they was solidly stabbed through the chest with a sword, fading into dust a good few moments later. He winced— even with respawn and practice, he himself would be feeling that for a good half hour at least. He looked over at the bed (white, Purple hadn’t thought to dye it) and waited for his friend to respawn.
They did, after another second. Green raised his hand in greeting, mouth opening to speak, but they didn’t even seem to see him. Instead, they inhaled sharply, eyes strangely unfocused, and ran to pick up their gear before starting again.
“Purple?” Green said, pushing off the tree trunk, “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
No indication that they even heard him. Their sword was already out, and they didn’t even seem to comprehend the aftereffects of that probably very painful respawn; though, now he was paying attention to that, Purple’s legs seemed to be shaking a little, and the swings of their sword seemed a bit frantic now. The construct matched their hits with the same energy.
Green looked up at the sky— it was getting dark now. He briefly wondered how much effort it would take to drag them up to their treehouse, considering they likely wouldn’t be taking the initiative to do it themself.
Purple was facing his direction now, so he really took the opportunity to look at them. Their blank face, other than the scratches covering their skin and gritted teeth, suggested that they were just going through the motions, but the— he didn’t even know how to describe the look in their eyes. Desperation, sort of, though that wasn’t all of it, and anxiety and stubbornness underlying. They were looking past the construct, he realised, as his friend swiped considerably above its head as if fighting an opponent taller than even themself.
Green fully stood up, hand reaching up into his hotbar as a precaution, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. “Purple,” he said, voice as even as he could manage, “Are you okay?”
Again, nothing. Green pulled out his bow, shooting an arrow clean into the spine of the armour stand. At point blank, the shot was fatal, and the armour stand popped into the item.
Purple seemed a little behind, as they slashed their sword down one more time before realising that they weren’t hitting anything. They stumbled back once, but, shockingly didn’t fall. The arrow from the shot had landed on the floor; their head slowly traced the path it had taken, back to Green. They stared at him, eyes wide, still glassy. Their sword dropped onto the floor.
He waved at them once, but when that garnered no reaction (again!) he stepped up to them. He had put his bow back and cleared his hand at this point, so he hoped that his slow movements wouldn’t result in a sword to the chest.
(Just like a wild animal, Red in his head said. Shut up Red in my head, Green thought.)
He hadn’t been stabbed yet, so he took the lack of action to step right in front of Purple. In the back of his mind, something gleeful realised that he was taller than them by a couple pixels, but he disregarded that for the time being. There were more important things to worry about.
“Hey, Purple,” Green said slowly, “What’s wrong? Are you, like— can you hear me?”
Something like recognition flickered in their vision, which he took as a good sign. “So you can,” he mumbled, then, louder, “You should sit down, probably.”
Green was surprised he himself had kept it together this long, considering his heart was pounding in his chest and he wasn’t even sure if his friend’s mind was— here, really. He wasn’t even sure if he was doing this right.
In any case, he had managed to convince Purple that they weren’t a horrible stick who deserved to die forever that one time on the mountain. He could get them out of their head.
When they made no attempt to move, Green made the executive decision to drag them to the floor himself. Cautiously, he placed a hand on their shoulder— then immediately pulled it back, as Purple’s breath stuttered for an honestly terrifying second.
“Okay then, not doing that.”
With, somehow, more trepidation, he took their hand. He squeezed it tight, but there was no returning motion. Still, there was no negative reaction (no reaction at all, but he figured that would be the case either way), so he tried to figure out the logistics of sitting on the floor with the chance that the person he needed to maintain contact with would not follow him, when—
Purple jolted.
They backed into the thick trunk of their tree, a step away from the ladder, and let go of Green’s hand. Their eyes were really wide now, but they were clear at least.
“What—” their voice cracked. They started again, barely even noticing the break, “What was that?”
Green opened his mouth to speak, but Purple— this one, who was actually likely to respond— probably hadn’t seen him. He raised his hand in sheepish greeting. “Hi.”
They jumped back again, this time fully slamming back into the tree. Green winced in sympathy, but now that they were actually seeing the world around them, the pain probably helped them get the rest of the way back.
“Green!” Purple… gasped? Yeah, they were way out of breath, “How long have you been here?”
Green, intentionally conspicuously, looked up at the sky. It was dark now. If there was anything he could do well, it was faking indifference. “About… ten? Twenty minutes? Not long, I was just passing by really.” He wasn’t, in fact, passing by, but Purple didn’t need to know that.
They seemed to suspect something, but let it be. Their hands were shaking, the sword clutched tightly in their right looking like it was about to drop to the floor. They were still breathing rather fast, though they didn’t seem to catch that particular fact.
“So you saw what I was doing?” Purple said quietly, not making eye contact.
Green shrugged. “I guess I did, yeah.”
Silence, for a good minute or two. Green sat down properly on the floor and patted the space next to it. Purple followed. They sat strangely straight-backed for being crosslegged on a dirt floor, but at this point he wasn’t going to judge.
“Well,” he said instead, breaking the silence, “Are you okay?”
In lieu of a yes or no, Purple responded, “I was getting rusty.”
Green blinked. “Okay?”
A deep, shaky breath in. “I haven’t been— I can’t keep up with you lot, and I've been too reliant on elytra movement-wise, and I tire so fucking easily—”
“Purp—”
“And it takes me so long to recover as well so I’m not as good and now that I’ve been fighting less I’m losing it!” Purple made eye contact with Green, finally. He saw tears running down their face, but elected to ignore it. They’d realise in their own time.
“Hey,” he said, “you can’t be good at everything, yeah? It’s—”
“You are,” they pointed out, and crap he didn’t really want that to be brought up again, because that meant that he would have to bring up—
“You know that… prank you and Red pulled on me the other day?” he said, with no small amount of playful irritation.
Purple laughed quietly, shoulders dropping (success!). “Yeah? What about it?”
“What’s about it is that— don’t tell Red I said this, by the way— that was really smart, actually, and I am so annoyed that I didn’t think of any of that sooner. Like, you’re really good at reading people, yeah? I’m… not very good at doing that all the time. Outside of fighting, I mean, and I know this is what I was made to do or whatever but being able to defeat your opponent isn’t the only thing important in life, you know? Just—” he paused. “How long have you been training today, exactly?”
Purple blinked, an uncomprehending look in their eyes— had they not been told things like this before?— and looked like they were about to say something to the contrary, but just sighed, slumping. Their sword went back into their inventory, and Green was suddenly aware of the dark circles on his friend’s face. They glanced up at the sky. “Maybe… since a bit earlier this afternoon? I think?”
Green frowned. “Purp, of course you’d be getting tired, that’s like, what, four, five hours ish? Were you taking breaks?”
They weren’t looking at him again.
“That would be a no, then. Just—” He gestured over to himself. “C’mere. You look like you need a—”
Purple’s entire bodyweight, gangly limbs and all, slammed into his chest, forcing the breath out of his lungs.
“A hug,” he finished, a little breathless, then, whining, “Ow.”
Purple snorted. They wiped the tears away from their eyes, finally realising that they were crying, with no little difficulty considering they were still partway through a hug.
“Well, this is a bit awkward now, isn’t it?” they said, laughing wetly. Green grinned, then squeezed their hand. Purple returned the motion.
There was a groan about ten blocks away, then the scuttling of small feet on dirt. Green looked up just in time for something to bite his ankles. He hissed and lurched to the side, unceremoniously pushing Purple to the side. He looked down.
A baby zombie snarled at his feet.
“Ah crap.”